My career...

Despite my love for Long Island which continues today, the promise of working with my friend Chris again, the excitement of new friends and challenges, and the lure of
beachfront living were enough to seal the deal so I accepted an offer from CommVault Systems and moved to New Jersey. After only a few days in my new office it became
appearent that I made the right move as I found talent, intellegence, and friendship at every level. Soon good friends grew out of very capable co-workers in all departments
and the potential for great things took another jump as my friend Henry, the best engineer I've ever known, also joined us from CA.

Shortly after joining I learned that the company was planning a brand new flagship backup solution and I was being asked to evaluate the documentation and prototypes.
It was then that I received quite a suprise. For some time prior to joing CommVault, Henry and I had been working on an idea for a completely new enterprise backup
solution building out everything from the interface right down to what was then a novel architecture for shielding the solution from the complexities of computer hardware
control. Now, sitting in the lab looking at the beginnings CommVault's new flagship offering, I saw many of the elements we ourselves had within our solution for turning
"backup" into "storage management" and they called it Galaxy.

After submitting my thoughts and recommendations I put together a small group to build the interface that would bring Microsoft's usability certification to the product. Again,
instead of settling for a solution satisfying the requirments of the day, I looked forward and architected a solution that saw the GUI communicating with the server through a generic
control and data interface. Seperating the business improving the user experience from that of communicating with storage management servers across the enterprise not only
simplified the tasks and made the component more stable, but it also simplified the path of development for new types of interfaces including Windows Explorer integration.

Out of all the happy memories I have from my time at CommVault, the happiest are those spent on ice. After a few lunches I learned that several of the people I worked with
also loved hockey, a few even played, and one was actually very good. So I asked the VP of engineering if he'd support my effort to put together a company team, and he did
with Jersey's and his participation. Over the following months our display on the rink went from comic (with one exception) to competent and before I knew it, our sales
director had setup a game against a team from Microsoft to be played at Madison Square Garden! The Microsoft players where far better than we were, save one, so they hired
some help for us in the form of the Hanson brothers from the movie SlapShot. The game was a dream and we raised $30,000 for the Ronald McDonald House charity!

Then, unbelievably, it got even better because a few months later, Microsoft flew us out to Seattle for a game at Key Arena. Two games, actually, with the first
pitting our not even amateur effort against a team of ex-NHL and movie stars. I checked Cam Neely into the boards (with his permission) and gave up the puck politely to
Doug Bodger as I entered the zone (seeing as there was no point) and then shaked the hand of their team's coach; The Great One, Wayne Getzky! And, above all the hockey
dreams and stars, we raised over $1 million for the Ronald McDonald House.

The bursting of the .com bubble ended my time at CommVault and it was a very sad two hours I spent saying goodbye to the coworkers who had become
dear friends and leaving the building in which I spent so many good times. Its been the contradiction in my professional life that I've always wanted
to create something of my own, yet the value I place on the friendships I've made working for someone else would always make it hard to leave.